


Beloved

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 13:59:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18852475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: Word prompt asked by waknatious via tumblr





	Beloved

/bɪˈlʌvd/

“Then love again.”

The words had been difficult to swallow, to understand. Not because they on themselves were dense per se but because she truly hadn’t had the time to process them. She had put them away, trying hard not to think on eyes filled with pain and the shine of someone who had only met her way before she had transformed into the person she had been for far longer than she had been the naïve girl who had thought love could really trump everything that was thrown on her way.

She doubted she had truly believed that but, during those months before Daniel had been killed she had almost thought they could make it, she could make it. And so, when everything had come down she had found herself staring at a pile of ashes of what her future could have been.

She knew the man had meant well, she had felt the words ringing true, traveling from his lips to her mind, face contorted in the effort of keeping a smidge of humanity alive. The one she had stripped away. Still, she had refused them for a while longer, the coldness of the sheets at the other side of her bed when she had tried to go to sleep aftterwards, Graham and what he represented gone as well, making her press her lips together and wonder if she would ever be able to see affection as something else than a mere transaction, a mere deal one could access to if needed.

She had adopted that train of thought after she had tried her very best to keep hope alive, the beating of a heart that wasn’t his heavy on her palms when she had tried for the first time. It would be better, she had murmured in front of her mirror, feigning not to notice the hurt on Sidney’s eyes, if she never gave herself to another. If she never opened more of herself to a world that had gutted her time and time again.

And so, when her mother had returned, Regina had fallen into the old trap, love not an option she was willing to partake in.

It wasn’t the active predicament of the verb, she had told to herself, deep in thought, late at night. But the passive aspect, the one in where if she dared to love she also could be subjected to pain. She had pressed her fingers against her sternum, wondering if she was strong enough to pluck her own heart out, cut herself from the very same risk but she, like she had always done before, had remembered the pain that had always won against her own cruelness. The one her mother had made her feel. And so she had kept laying awake, eyes in the ceiling and Henry’s face the one who had been the one who had made her think she could keep going. If only for a little more.

Yet, the words had stuck, had been embedded on the back of her eyelids as she had tried to fall asleep and had followed her when all she had had had been the metallic taste of blood on her mouth and a trigger to contain. She had felt them around her wrists as magic kept pouring out of her, a flash of hot pain traveling up her spine as Emma had returned, wildness on her eyes and decisiveness on the way her lips were almost white in the way she kept them pressed together.

Love was not only fire; Daniel’s voice had said inside her mind. It was not only desire but warm calm waters. The ones that would appear even in the strongest of storms. It was care, it was trust. And so she had staggered forward and had managed to handle the onslaught against her magic as Emma’s had reached for hers. In a way that had made her weak but also strong. Strong enough for her to wonder, to think, on the words once again.

She had kissed his ring, kept it close, back at Neverland. The mechanic motion one that had given her enough assuredness to keep up with the fact that she felt at loss. That she felt that she truly didn’t have to go back to. If it wasn’t for Henry himself.

And yet, when they have found him, when she had called forth the darkness to swallow the moon, Emma’s green eyes on her as she mimicked her stance, she had thought on the words again. On what they could mean.

Love was weakness. That had been the single thing she still carried around, close to her heart, close to the chains she still kept around it. Love meant malleable thoughts, actions that could be predicted and used. But wasn’t love a two-way street? If she could use the desire others felt for her wasn’t love also supposed to give something in return to the fact one opened to the possibility of being destroyed? Wasn’t love strength for the ones who decided to remain blind to the darkest shades of it all?

She hadn’t known how to answer those questions and yet, when she had said goodbye to the blonde and Henry she had felt a tug there, at the way Emma’s eyes bore into her. Far too understanding, far too caring.

Care. Feeling cared.

She now drummed her fingers against the sheets that covered her body, her eyes once more drawing never-ending lines on the ceiling above her. She felt the need for sleep descending over her, closing her eyes as it made her skin warm, pliable, but she fought against it a little more as she turned and peered into the darkness of the room, to the silver hued light that created lines alongside Emma’s silhouette.

It had been that, at the end, what had put everything into motion in a way she would have never imagined it would have. Everything had unraveled from there; realizations falling like droplets of rain, soaking her to the bone and, by the time the blonde had returned, a year passed and too many things unsaid, she hadn’t known if Daniel’s words were true anymore, but she felt ready to understand them.

To not only love again but to believe she could be loved in return. To be trusted, to be believed. To be considered more than just a naïve girl, than just an Evil Queen.

She sighed and pressed herself closer to Emma’s side, the angle awkward but not something she was willing to protest for the time being. Not when she could feel Emma’s pulse beneath her fingertips as she rose her hand and grazed the blonde’s neck, her lips quirking on her sleep. Ticklish as ever, Emma didn’t stir but she moved away from the sensation, eliciting a soft smile from her, one that was almost painful on the way it clutched her heart, made her let out a shuddering breath.

It wasn’t only trust but the way Emma had rose her eyes and nodded at her, time and time again, knowing her tells, knowing that she had always cared far too much. No matter how. It was the simplest things, the ones who didn’t make into the epicenes of what had been whispered back at the Enchanted Forest; the easiness that came from the blind realization that she would always be able to look away and find Emma’s steady gaze supporting her, the one that would turn mellower, more open, when it was the blonde’s turn to be cared for. It was the way Emma opened her hand and intertwined her fingers with her when Regina felt like it, it was the absence of fear. It was the way she could feel Emma’s magic thrumming against her, calling her, asking her to be closer and closer still.

It was the way she heard her whisper to her when Emma thought she was asleep, it was the laughter they sometimes shared, away from any baddie, away from any outside expectation. It was the dots mingled between the words that had already been said. It was, after all, the way she now Regina pulled Emma’s chin higher, so she was able to drop a kiss. One that shone on the darkness, mauve and white, gold details rising from it as she trembled, happy, elated.

It wasn’t the admission of love but the knowledge that it was reciprocated.

And, at the end, that was what Daniel would probably have wanted.


End file.
